In each of these six essays, treating the greatest literary accomplishments of medieval and renaissance England, the author is concerned with the literary work as a whole and with a survey of recent critical approaches to it. Beowulf, by R. E. Kaske, The Canterbury Tales, by Richard L. Hoffman, Le Morte Darthur, by Larry D. Benson, The Faerie Queen, by A. C. Ham­ilton, King Lear, by Ernest William Talbert, and Paradise Lost, by Irene Samuel.